“Let what out?”
“That cough. You’re only hurting your lungs.”
“There isn’t any cough!” Small shrieked. “If you say cough to me again——”
He stopped there, not for lack of words, but because he was suddenly seized with a paroxysm of coughing that rendered speech impossible. Kid turned away, apparently with a delicate consideration for the other’s embarrassment, but in reality to grin triumphantly and wink wickedly at the doorknob. Small, with one hand clutching convulsively at his chest and the other accusingly outstretched toward Kid, rushed from the room, coughing and sputtering.
“Don’t forget!” admonished Kid. “Tinkham’s Throat-Ease! Twenty-five cents a box! Accept—no—substitutes!”
Kid had to yell the latter part of the injunction since Small’s footsteps were dying away down the corridor. Then came the sound of a slammed door—and silence. Silence, do I say? No, for, faint yet unmistakable above the silence of a Sunday afternoon, came the evidences of Small’s awful malady!
XI
AND STARTS IN BUSINESS
The Junior Four met again on Wednesday after morning school. The thaw had passed and the winter world was frozen hard again. Icicles hung from the gutters and the porches and even now, in the middle of the day, only an occasional drop pattered down under the faint ardor of the sun. In the harness room it was particularly cold. The sunlight created a little warmth by the window and Kid thoughtfully suggested to Lanny that it might be well if he changed places with Small.
“Let him have the sun on his back, Lanny. You don’t mind, do you? Go on, Small, sit over there; it’s warmer.”